Pizza Hut Is Giving Away Free Pizza for Life

For Pizza Hut, life has been lonely at the top. Despite being America's largest pizza chain in both sales and locations, the chain has struggled in recent years after a less-than-successful rebrand. As a result, Pizza Hut has been "in turnaround mode," according to its parent company's CEO. Last month, that meant making a renewed commitment to delivery. And now, the Hut is trying out another tried and true method for customer satisfaction: a revamped loyalty program. One very loyal customer will even earn free pizza for life.

Hut Rewards bills itself as "the only national pizza loyalty program that rewards customers with unlimited points for every dollar spent on food online." Despite sounding a bit like a giant qualifier, the program actually seems pretty simple. For every dollar spent online, Pizza Hut customers earn two points. 200 points can be redeemed for a medium pizza; 250 points can be redeemed for a large pizza. So a little math shows that every time you spend $100 online, you get a free pie—which is certainly better than the old nonexistent reward program where for every $100 spent, you got nothing.

To promote these new Hut Rewards, the company is giving customers the chance to win free Pizza Hut for life in a contest tied to a YouTube video made in celebration of the launch. In the clip, Pizza Hut says it set a world-record for knocking down the most dominoes in the shape of a pizza (file under: very specific records you didn't know existed). According to Pizza Hut, the record-setting domino rally was constructed over the course of more than two days by 14 master domino builders (file under: jobs you didn't know existed). But how many dominos were used in its construction? The first Hut Rewards member to email HutRewards@PizzaHut.com with the correct answer will be awarded the free pizza for life prize. If no one submits a correct answer by the deadline of 11:59 p.m. Central Time on Thursday, August 31st, the closest guess will win the prize.

For the record, "pizza for life" in this case will come "in the form of 312,000 points deposited into their Hut Rewards account which is good for one pizza, every other week for 60 years." So for your average college student, "pizza for life" would be enough to get you through to about senior year.

Also notable for Pizza Hut fans, to further encourage signups, from now until October 1st, the chain is offering double Hut Rewards on purchases—meaning you can snag enough points to earn a free pie with every $50 you spend. Not too shabby.

But one thing Pizza Hut doesn't appear to address in any of this is... why dominoes? It would seem like an odd choice if knocking over as many dominoes as possible wasn't intended as a not-so-subtle dig at their biggest competitor. But at the same time, if the video is intended as an insult, Pizza Hut certainly doesn't play that up. In fact, the two-minute long domino rally actually makes dominoes look pretty cool.